Yes, I am the boss at Unicycle.com in the UK… I am also a unicyclist.
I have been part of the forum for a long time, hence the topic title. On the old forum it asked you to describe your unicycle ability, so I put in “Ok Unicyclist” and someone complained, so I changed it to “Mostly OKish Unicyclist”. I think it sums me up.
Unicycle Passion: I have been riding a unicycle in the late 70’s and by the mid 80’s I had modified a 24” Pashley and was using it off road. My interests in unicycles is broad. Although I am known for my Muni and road riding, I also love unicycle hockey and I have even competed in track racking and Freestyle at UNICON.
My road riding experience includes jointly holding the World Record for travelling for Lands End to John O’Groats in the UK and holding the fastest non geared time for 42km and 100km.
You may also find I will comment on Penny Farthings that come up in threads in the forum. I have been building and racing penny farthings since 2012 and have been the European champion several times.
Building/designing/selling unicycles: I trained as a product designer at Newcastle in the UK and used these skills to design and build the first Carbon Fibre unicycles in the 1990’s. This led onto becoming one of the founders of Unicycle.com in 1999 and designing all their unicycles since then. This includes, UDC, Club, Nimbus and Impact.
Unicycle.com is based in 14 countries around the world and is staffed by experts in unicycling.
Hi Roger! I’ve known you as an incredibly helpful and knowledgeable voice on the end of the phone line, so it’s really interesting to hear more of your backstory. I hadn’t realised that you designed the unis too! My fleet is all Nimbus (20", 26" Muni, 36" Oracle), and I think they’re awesome.
What happened to your carbon fiber unicycle frame?
Let me guess “could not survive” the abuse of beginning unicycle riders?
You should see how much abuse my 24" club took during my learning process.
It did not survive my spinning hammer toss, but my next unicycle 20" torker did the job.
My carbon frame unicycles still exist and have stood the time of being lent to every learner out there I found. They are a bit dated now. The best hubs at the time were the Susue hubs which were cotterless and had 89m bearing pitch. So not very compatible with modern strong hub and nothing like as strong.
There was over 20 built in the end and a lot of them are still in use. The Mk5 had a problem with bonding on the legs, but I think they have all been sorted over the years.
I still use one of my 20" ones which I use for hockey. The Mk2 which is a 26" Muni is still being used daily by a friends teenage son’s and is very much loved.
